Wheaton Rec Center Stuff

This is not a post about the weather, but jiminy crickets and sweet fancy Moses, will this winter never end? Snow upon frigidity upon snow. The calendar tells me the first day of spring is later this week, but I suspect the calendar may be lying to me.

Happy snowy St. Patty’s Day.

This is also not really a post about the Wheaton Community Recreation Center, which may or may not end up getting a historic designation. Redevelopment of the library and rec center is going to happen, and I think Wheatonites are generally looking forward to that, whether or not the 1960s rec center building is demolished, or its facade is left standing with internal upgrades to integrate it into the new development.

I kind of like the idea of leaving the facade, it is interesting and unusual and why not? In general I think historic preservation can sometimes run amok, with edifices of relatively limited historic value impeding progress, but this isn’t that kind of instance, because the progress will happen either way. It would have been neat if the new Safeway could have incorporated some of the cool design elements of the old Safeway, which was terrible in all ways except for the facade. Keeping the WCRC architecture might be neat in the same way. But I have a hard time getting too worked up about it, and probably most other people do too, and that’s probably part of why the MoCo council voted no on the historic designation last month.

But again, this isn’t really a post about the rec center. Instead, this is just to note that the issue is ongoing, and is being covered particularly well by Dan Reed in various places, including today’s WaPo, and previously at Greater Greater Washington, and of course over at Just Up the Pike. Another Day in Wheaton also had a good post recently on the topic. So go read that stuff, and if you get worked up about it, go to the next MoCo council meeting when they’re supposedly having a final vote, possibly on March 25 but I don’t know, keep an eye on their calendar and on JUTP.

If they open a cafe inside the rec center — and with that Asian-Modernist facade, a Japanese or Thai or maybe a modern Asian fusion place would fit in perfectly — I will post about that for sure.